


to understand all is to forgive all

by quentintarrantino



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Heartbreak, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 17:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quentintarrantino/pseuds/quentintarrantino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At twenty seven he mistakes hormones for love. Newton never seems to make the distinction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to understand all is to forgive all

**Author's Note:**

> trying to get into the swing of writing dramatic fanfiction for these people?

He stuffs it away as far down as he can bury it. Over heaps of embarrassing moments in his childhood, every single one night stand he’s had, he buries it deeper then the dead from this war they’re rapidly losing and he looks over to the man who is willing to share the neural load and nods once. Newt hits the button.

\--

Hermann sees it in the drift anyway.

It’s a sea of Newton, awash in so many thoughts and feelings and it’s like he’s being pulled through chilly water, snagging on occasional memories and sometimes he stops and hesitates to look at a few of them until the drift wrenches them out of his head and he continues to be dragged. He sees it all, and he has no control over what’s ferried over to the other side despite the fact that he tries to catch them like papers blowing away in the wind but it’s no good, by the time he realizes what Newt sees it’s already gone.

\--

Every private moment is now his, the way his lab partner’s wife looks in the morning with only a sheet clinging to her body, the feel of his unborn child kicking under his hand and the alien swell of affection that goes with it. He tries to pretend like he doesn’t see them, to close his mind off to such intrusive images but still he can hear Vanessa’s words that are muffled by the roaring in his ears and the yelling of a man the memory tells him is his father but does not resemble him. He can feel his own thoughts being dredged up like rocks rolling helplessly on the bottom of a rushing river and he can’t grasp them firm enough as they turn to dust in his hands and slip through the drift much to his horror.

\--

Caution and hurt and rejection that doesn’t belong to him is channeled fast and strong and in the short moments the drift is between them he can see a lifetime of hidden thoughts flashing behind his eyelids. Hermann’s nose begins to bleed he can feel the warm sticky blood snaking down his face to drip onto his sweater, his body is convulsing and still he feels so calm trapped inside his head with Newton.

It’s loud in this strange cyan space and when the drift is over and Newt’s pulling his damned contraption off his head and he opens his eyes they both know what each other saw but there’s a world to save.

It can wait.

\--

Newton dreams in the drift. It’s been a month since the Breach closed and the Kaiju are gone but the one gossamer strand of the hive mind remains in him and Hermann, their echoes of memories and thoughts pool and collect on each other’s ends and sometimes it’s like they’re sitting right next to each other, Newt swears he can feel his breath rise and fall even when they sleep half an army base away from each other.

They haven’t properly spoken since the war ended, there’s too much to think about and he knows it’s his fault. The drift was something he thought he could control but the more he fought it the harder it got to keep what he wanted to hide most buried and it was handed over to Hermann like war spoils neither had wanted. Newt hates that he wakes up at night to the sounds of a woman’s laugh, a wife that’s not his own but he can’t help feeling residual love for despite the fact that she’s ruined everything for him. He wants to scream when his dreams are invaded by awe and wonder at a daughter that isn’t his, a family that doesn’t belong to him.

He hates that Hermann can feel when it happens most of all.

\--

They don’t have to talk to know when one’s in the lab and one’s not, they trade off and Newt works the night away and in the morning Hermann wanders in to finish doing the last of his reports. The Shatterdome is being decommissioned and the Jaeger program is coming to an end, an entire era for human history has closed and the mathematician feels as though he’s lost sight of what he came here for along the way. Newt’s uncertainties mingle with his mind and when he closes his eyes at night all he feels is the deeply masked sorrow of heartbreak so sharp it jerks him awake and he stares at himself in the mirror bolted to the wall in his room for a long time, wondering where he ends and Newton begins, the red ring around his eye spiraling out in impossibly intricate fractal patterns.

He tells Vanessa that he’s coming home in three weeks, she smiles through the computer and his heart twists as he eyes the swell of her belly and they press their hands against the monitor before the call times out and he sits on his bunk feeling exhausted. Bearing a burden he never wanted is tiring work.

\--

It’s unfair; resentment is always present through the bond. Hermann resents him and Newton doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t say his name anymore, the words sound unholy on his tongue like he’s swearing in a church or something. The quiet landscape of his partner’s mind has been set on fire by his memories and feelings.

Arguments are held in small spaces between the drift, his sorrow builds up and spills over despite his best efforts to stop it, his boat is sinking and he can barely keep it together. He fucks three different lab technicians and each one is the same, Hermann feels it all and Newt knows he does. He forces the drift as far open as it will go when he hits his peak and when he whines out his pleasure he feels Hermann’s body respond along with the slow burn of anger and violation. Images of Vanessa flood his mind in response, every affectionate kiss and the warm sensation of stability and true happiness to blot out the stink of casual sex with empty touches, the joy of family to spar with that of bleak futures.

\--

_“Fuck.” A singular word that’s breathed out slowly like smoke, escaping from Newt’s mouth as his body moves up and down slowly to accommodate the shifting positions of Hermann’s body. His head is bent and they move together, lazy and slow because they were young and it was just what they did._

_At twenty seven and twenty six there couldn’t have possibly been any consequences for them to consider, not when the world’s ending. Newton rolls his hips and Hermann’s arms go weak, slumping against the wall as he watches him work, sweat clinging to his brow with the light forming a halo around his hair like he’s some kind of ethereal being. Hermann accosts himself for thinking such stupid things._

_“I’m gonna-,”_

_“Sh, I know.” He hushes the scientist as their lips catch and with a magnificent shudder Newt comes, his mess spilling onto Hermann which immediately makes him want to pick up the pace to rush up to meet him and in a few minutes he’s right there beside him._

_At twenty seven he mistakes hormones for love. Newton never seems to make the distinction._

\--

_The minute Vanessa accidentally wanders into his lab he knows he’s fucked because she’s smart and beautiful and Hermann looks just curious enough to not throw the piece of paper she presses into his hands when she departs. Newt watches from his side of the lab and Hermann doesn’t address what just happened, but the back of his head speaks volumes especially when he doesn’t magically show up at Newt’s door when the workday ends._

_It was a casual arrangement, and it had run its course and it was understandable but there was no reason why they couldn’t continue to work together and behave like adults. He tells himself that for a very long time, as Vanessa becomes more and more permanent in their lives._

\--

There’s no more things to be said, it’s all over now.

Newton finds him anyway, Hermann should’ve known. He is standing outside while the rain spews buckets and Hermann had the foresight to bring an umbrella. The helicopter is waiting to take him to the airport where the exhausting journey back to Berlin will begin and his bags are all loaded up and it’s just them standing on the tarmac while the pilot waits for them to say their goodbyes, checking in with the tower for the all-clear.

“You really fucked me over dude.” Newt says and he sounds tired, saving the world sucks the life out of his face and he doesn’t look so vibrant anymore.

For all of Hermann’s faults he was a man of honor. “Goodbye Newton.”

Newt stands stubbornly on the tarmac as the helicopter takes off, Hermann can see him until they climb so high into the sky that the rain obscures his vision and then he’s gone but he can still feel the drift as much as ever if not stronger. Things are being pushed through it as though his colleague was afraid it would be broken with distance.

The real goodbye is the low lament and self-loathing he can feel all the way back to Germany.


End file.
